Charlie Martz and Other Stories (9 page)

The girl opened her purse again and put her hand into it. Harry Myrold glanced at her and then back to the road, but he could see that her hand stayed inside the purse. Not carfare. She was probably going to get something at the drugstore.

He eased into the right lane and braked slowly in front of the brightly lit Sunoco station. Two cars were parked by the pumps with attendants filling both with gas.

The girl opened the door and moved with it onto the street.

Harry Myrold said nothing, but her hand came out of the purse and he saw motion and a blur of white and the girl's hand was on the backrest of the front seat.

He looked at her and then to her hand. “What was that?”

“Take a look for yourself,” she said, pointing a finger to the rear seat. “Take a good look.”

It was on top of the brown box that said
ROSE BROTHERS
. It was white and flimsy, contrasting with the heavy brown box. A pair of women's panties. Ripped from one side to the other, across the front.

“Good God!”

“I'm the one's supposed to be yelling after what you've done,” she said. “But I'm so scared, I can't yell. It's a horrible experience for a girl.” Then she smiled. “Hand me your wallet or they'll hear rape all the way downtown and those two guys at the gas station will be all over you in two seconds.”

“Good God!”

“Gimme the wallet. I don't want your papers, just the money.”

He handed her his alligator billfold, staring. She dropped her books on the front seat and opened it, taking out the bills and throwing the billfold back to Harry Myrold. She flicked through the bills hurriedly.

“Six bucks!” She glared at him. “God, you're some big shot! Maybe you'd better turn that Buick in and go back to school.” Then she smiled again. “What the hell. So long daddy-o.”

He drove slowly the round-about way home. Thinking. And oddly enough, thinking about school. He still couldn't get past
aboris
.

His wife was waiting at the front door.

“How many did you have tonight?”

Harry Myrold looked very tired. Around the eyes especially.

“I didn't have any, Dorothy. I stopped to pick up my new . . .” He looked down at his hands in his pockets and saw the brown box on the rear seat with the white panties lying on top.

Dorothy turned without a word and walked out of the room. He waited until the bedroom door slammed, then he threw off his coat
and walked into the kitchen and took the bottle of Manhattan mix out of the cupboard.

The next day, during his lunch hour, Harry Myrold walked over to a men's store on Washington Boulevard. He bought a double-breasted blue suit and wrote out a check for exactly $134.45.

S
OMEONE WOULD SAY “BUT
, Father, over three thousand dollars. Who has that much to give?” And he would say, “Nuño.” Because he would see it in his mind that way: the boy, Nuño, coming through the trees riding a broomstick, slapping his hip for speed but held back by the saddlebags that hung down from his shoulder and bounced against his legs; saddlebags heavy with $3,055 in U.S. currency.

They would say, “Nuño?” looking at him curiously, then begin to smile, because even though his face was serious they would realize he was kidding and even if he knew who gave the money he wasn't telling. It would be a mystery, something to talk about for a long time to come.

Unless, or until, whoever left the money became known.

All right, then they'd put up a plaque commemorating the cross-shaped church.
Built through the charity of
—

That's enough,
Father Schwinn thought.
Be sure, find out a few things first.
He had had this money perhaps ten minutes and already
it was spent. He took the saddlebags into his adobe and was out again before the boy had thought of something else to do.

“You're sure you didn't recognize him?”

“Father, he was almost gone when I saw him. I was sweeping in the church. I heard the horse and came out. The bags were by the door and he was already across the yard.”

“Going what way?”

The boy waved his arm. “That way.”

“You show me, eh?”

They moved through the pines, following the path to the church: the boy, Nuño, riding his broomstick sideways, close to the black cassock and now and then looking almost straight up to the priest's curled-brim straw and the bearded face beneath it that was the face of a stage driver or a mustanger or a man who knew the Apache and would be in charge of the Coyotero trackers at Fort Thomas.

The boy, Nuño, who worked for Father Schwinn but lived at Rindo's Station, remembered other priests he had seen in his life and they had looked like priests; at least not like stage drivers. He couldn't imagine standing in front of Rindo's when the Hatch & Hodges arrived and seeing one of those priests come down off the driver's boot. But he could picture Father Schwinn—not with a cassock on but with a coat that stuck out at the hip because of a Colt beneath it—walking the way they walked into Rindo's after hours up on the seat.

Like theirs, Father Schwinn's face had the look of a saddle or a pair of chaps that had turned dark brown and would always be the same. Or like the face in a picture you would never forget. Not like the face of St. Francis in a holy picture; Father Schwinn's beard was heavier and he didn't have that ring above his head. More like a picture the boy had seen of ex–President Grant; though Father Schwinn was not as heavy and he was probably taller. He was probably taller than anybody.

Now they were out of the pines and approaching the one-room adobe that was called St. Anthony's. It stood almost at the edge of the slope so that its pointed, mesquite-pole roof and white-painted cross were against the sky, sharply outlined in the morning sun.

“Show me where he was,” the priest said.

The boy pointed. “There.”

“Then he didn't go down the slope.”

“No. When I was inside I heard him go around and I thought someone was passing, going down to Rindo's. But then he came back and when I got outside he was already across the open and the bags were—here. He was almost in the trees and all I saw was a man on a
trigueño
. Like Mr. Rindo's.”

“Rindo's?”

“The horse. Like the
trigueño
he used to have. Father,
you
know.”

“You didn't tell me that before.”

“I just remembered.”

“You're sure.” He was watching the boy closely. “You have to be very sure about something like this.”

The boy wasn't smiling now; his eyes open wide. “I'm sure.”

“I mean, you say it was
like
Mr. Rindo's horse. You're not saying it
was
Mr. Rindo, or his horse.”

“Father, how could it be? That horse was stolen.”

“At the time of the holdup.”

“Sure. When Eladio was shot.”

There you are,
Father Schwinn thought.
Do you want it plainer than that? A man takes money, but his conscience or fear or both make him return it. It happens, eh? Sometimes. But
—he thought then—
did it happen?

“Father. Something the matter?”

“You said you heard him ride to the back of the church.”

“I thought he was passing, going to Rindo's.”

“But he didn't.”

The boy was frowning, shaking his head slowly. “No.”

Then why didn't he?
the priest thought.
If it was stolen money and he was going to return it, why didn't he? If—and with the
if
hope returned, a little at a time; if it really was the stolen money. Who knew for sure? Money looked like money and
trigueño
horses were brown and the world was full of both.

But he would have to be certain, getting all the picky irritating ifs out of the way, the good ifs and the bad ifs. And if the money belonged to Rindo,
even
if the money belonged to Rindo (though, God of all of us, it couldn't; you're much too just), then he would have to return it.

I
T WAS ALMOST NOON
as Father Schwinn walked down the slope from the church, covering the open thousand or so yards to the stage road and Rindo's Station with its low ramada-fronted adobe that was half saloon and half store, its outbuildings and horse pens, its windmill rising against the hot wash of sky. Rindo's was a way station on the Hatch & Hodges east-west line and would be for another nine months to a year, until the railroad came through from Willcox.

Then, they said, this place that you saw in a haze of dust and distance, and seemed forever to reach as the stage came down out of the Santa Catalinas, would become a rail stop, a cattle-loading point, and perhaps even a town. Rindo, Arizona. Some said that. Others, knowing Father Schwinn, said, “Uh-unh. St. Anthony, Arizona.” And they would bet money on it.

The priest crossed the road to the station now, a square wooden sign under one arm. His eyes, shaded by the curled-brim straw, held on the ramada of the main house and a cigar was clamped in the corner of his mouth. He inhaled it, letting the smoke out slowly, studying the man who was half-sitting, half-lying on the porch bench with a boot heel hooked over the edge. A young man wearing range
clothes and a revolver, his hat almost covering his eyes, but studying the black-cassocked figure, staring and not trying to conceal it.

To let you know he's not afraid of a priest,
Father Schwinn thought.
All right. I believe you.
He mounted the three steps, bringing the sign from under his arm, and hooked it on a nail next to the screen door. The young man looked up, and his face, close now, seemed familiar.

That family over on the San Pedro? O'Malley. Matsey. Massey.
Massey
—that was it. He had seen the boy only two or three times in the past year, but he remembered the boy's mother talking about him, worrying about him. Mrs. Massey. He was sure of it now.

Another man, older, in his thirties, but with the same hipless look of a rider and also wearing a Colt revolver, appeared in the doorway. He was holding a glass of mescal and came out with it to look at the sign that read:

ST. ANTHONY'S

Confession Saturday 2 to 5

Masses Sunday 7 & 8:30

“Up there,” Father Schwinn said, pointing to the church that was a small white mark on the rim of the slope. They both looked at him dully and he said to the older one, “Are you a Catholic?”

“Why?”

“Now why do you think?”

“Maybe I am,” the Massey boy said. His face was raised, the pointed brim of his hat still low over his eyes.

Father Schwinn looked at him. “All right. Are you?”

“I don't see it's any of your business.”

“You don't, eh? What do you think my business is?”

“Man walks around in a dress—I don't know.”

Father Schwinn stared at him. “Your mother know you're here?”

The Massey boy hesitated. “Just leave her at home.”

The older one moved closer to stand hip-cocked with the mescal glass in front of him. “Dick, you want to buy anything he's got to sell?”

“I didn't tell him to stop by.”

“Sonny,” Father Schwinn said, “a word of caution. You're too skinny to be talking like that.”

He brushed past them and went inside, across the beamed, low-ceilinged room, toward Al Rindo leaning on the plank bar. Rindo, with his solemn, still-handsome face, his cavalry mustache and slicked-to-the-side haircomb, was watching him and had been watching since the priest stepped up on the porch.

“You bothering my customers again?”

Father Schwinn pushed up the straw, rubbing the red line that showed on his forehead. “I think what the church needs is a good persecution to weed out the weaklings and the fence sitters. Then you'd know where everyone stood.”

Rindo's eyes rose. He remained leaning on his forearms, relaxed, his striped collarless shirt open at the neck. “Maybe I could start one. I'll call it Wipe Out Superstition.”

“There's no money in it.”

“Be something to do.”

“No.” Father Schwinn shook his head. “You think you're a pagan, but you wouldn't have the stomach for it.” He moved the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Who's the older one?”

Rindo straightened, looking past the priest. “Name is Frank Calder. He works some place over on the river.”

“Near the Masseys'?”

“I think. I've only seen him a few times.” His tone dropped. “Speaking of Frank Calder—” He reached behind him for the mescal bottle as Calder, with the slow chinging sound of his spurs, came up to the bar. He stood a few feet from the priest and nodded as
Rindo raised the mescal. Rindo poured, put the bottle back, and came around with an almost-full bottle of brandy.

“You ready for one?”

“Confession this afternoon. One sniff from the wrong party and the word's out I drink in the confessional.”

“I thought that's what you came for.”

“No, to put up my sign.” He paused. “How's Eladio?”

“He'll be all right.”

“No word about the holdup men?” He saw Rindo shake his head and asked then, “How many were there?”

“Eladio said two. By the time I got in from the pasture they were gone—with five thousand dollars.”

The priest's dark eyebrows, that were as dark and thick-looking as his General Grant beard, rose inquiringly. “You're sure that much?”

“Add a few hundred.”

“And one of your horses I think someone said.”

“The
trigueño
.”

“Yes.” He looked at his cigar stub then put it in his mouth again, leaning closer to the bar as Rindo struck a match.

“I wondered”—he puffed, drawing deeply and exhaling the smoke—“what if someone found the money? Or, what if they were caught and Eladio identified them—”

“I don't think he could. Their faces were covered.”

“But if they had the money. Could you identify
it
?”

“I don't know. Money's money.”

The priest nodded in agreement. “Isn't that the truth?”

“Money's money,” Rindo said again. “And there's always more wherever it came from.”

“Why,” Father Schwinn said, “does making money sound so easy when you say it?”

Rindo was looking directly at the priest. “Give people what they want and they'll pay for it.”

“Like whiskey.”

“Or brandy, or cigars.” Rindo turned to the shelf again and came back opening a cigar box.

“Father?”

The priest smiled. “You can do better than that.” He selected four cigars, putting them inside his cassock. “Now an honest-to-goodness devil—and I mean goodness from his point of view—would take me up on a high mountain and offer the whole world.”

“I'm afraid,” Rindo said, “you'd accept.”

“Ah, but only a little at a time. Moderation, Mr. Rindo, in all things.” Father Schwinn took the cigar from his mouth again. “I'm afraid I have to go.”

Rindo nodded. “If I get too crowded with immoderates tonight, I'll send the overflow up the hill.”

“You're a gentleman,” Father Schwinn said. “And maybe I'll do for you sometime.” He seemed about to go, but hesitated. “Like say a prayer your money's returned? How would you like St. Anthony doing a little interceding for you?”

“I understood he was dead.”

“Yes, but he keeps active.” The priest's tone lowered. “‘The sea obeys and fetters break and lifeless limbs thou dost restore, while treasures lost are found again when young or old'—or even Al Rindo—‘thy aid implore.'”